Tithebarn Sunk

This comes as no surprise. The Tithebarn scheme in Preston was flawed from the start.

It wasn't based on Preston's heritage and strengths, just wished to bulldoze our most precious buildings and start with year zero.

A plan developed in conjunction with local people, instead of behind our backs, would have incorporated the popular and iconic bus station into the design, avoided the delays that wrangling over this caused, and perhaps even have been built.

Now we're left to count the cost of Preston's autocratic and secretive developer-led approach to planning.

All that money wasted on the Vision Board in return for nothing. All that money wasted on legal battles with neighbouring councils, in return for nothing, all that time spent preventing other developments from happening, locking our city into a cycle of decline.

We learned nothing from Preston Town Hall. We learned nothing from Ringway and Crystal House, we learned nothing from the docks debacle. This £650m failure must finally ram the message home that the way Preston's leaders conduct planning just does not work.

We need to change the way we do things, open our planning and regneration strategies up, make them democratic, or we will simply continue to fail, over and over again.

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.